Today's Stories: John "Lugger" Thorp: Interview. Door Slammed Shut on Alpazat We have also opened a very nice photo gallery from Alpazat today. See more pictures from this beautiful cave.

Door Slammed Shut On Alpazat
Unaware of which continent they were on, the Alpazat Hardcore Team finally awoke and slowly realized that they were in Mexico; What happens in Mexico? Err, oh yeah that's it, we go caving, err, Alpazat, yeah, that's it, wonder what's going on there…

The stalagmite curtain at Alpazat.

So we formulated a plan to check out the sump and put in a photography- and a survey-team. Tony and I made a bee line for the sump with the water level being 1 meter lower than before. I got excited, and then swam, first 25 meters, then another 25 meters pressed against the roof hoping to get through to high level passage. Not that this would make the cave safe to push but it would be fun. I returned to John, Nikki and Oyvind to set up a photo session at the start of the sump.

Oyvind and Nikki operated the Cameras while John and I worked the flashes. While setting up this shot particular I got tangled in the dive line then the phone line… Perplexed as to where Kev had got to we swam forward to find him fiddling with his flashes.

"I put this flash on the box and it floated off," He exclaimed whilst cursing and shivering. He then swam over to the other side of the passage where he briefly fiddled again with his flashes and then proceeded to make gurgling noises whilst thrashing about allot.
  "Are you all right Kev?"
  "No"
  "Do you need a hand?"
  "No I'll be right boy, It's just the diving line… glug… that's better, oh bugger, the phone cable… glug…"

	Two brave cavers swimming from the sump, along, and at times, entangled in, the dive line.

The next photo was to be taken on the 3-meter climb before the sump and this is where I blew up John with a faulty flash bulb.

  "Thanks Kev."

Shortly after this, we met up with the survey team, Tony and Aitch, who were resolutely refusing to survey the passage from which they had descended. An encounter with vampire bats had made them run away. The trip from here became more stressful with voice communications reduced to zero by the huge echoing passage. Not even able to coordinate a simple photo, we managed to recover the last picture by shouting very loudly at our Norwegian photographer (Oyvind) and running around like headless chicken with a flashgun.

Cold and bored, we selected sector five and headed for the Bivi Cave. Removing all the camp kit, and transporting it up the hill, proved to be a bit of an effort, but weeks of camp kit were eventually extricated. We had arranged to meet a colectivo at Rosa's bar at 6pm. It showed up at 6:30, going in the wrong direction, so we jumped the next transport we could find heading towards Cuetzalan.

All in all it was a good day, Alpazat is now shut, but the team is about to hit Tepetzala, so watch this space.
Blown up by Kev
Scared witless by bats